My Thoughts on macOS Big Sur, iOS 14 and Apple Silicon
date_range
Wednesday, June 24, 2020

macOS Big Sur, iOS 14, Apple Silicon. To me, I would say that Apple Silicon was the biggest announcement of WWDC 2020. It was a huge leap for apple to finally move on from Intel chips. Many people don’t realize it, but Intel makes some of the worst chips for MacBooks. Yes, they make real fast chips with amazing single-threaded performance, but the chips Apple chooses are simply illogical. My 2017 MacBook has a dual-core (yes, 2 cores) i5. To Intel’s credit though, it does stay cool (kinda) and is still quite useable to this day (or is that Apple’s credit?) I am really looking forward to the new Apple Silicon-based laptops and hopefully desktops. If Apple’s WWDC is to be believed, their chips will run at desktop speeds whilst consuming laptop-grade power. They are confident enough to say this because the iPad Pro 2020, with their A12Z processors are indeed faster than many, many laptops out there. As a representation, it runs Fortnite at 120 FPS. To the gamers out there, that’s 120Hz refresh rate display on an iPad. That’s faster than a PS4 or Xbox can run. Desktop processors can be even more impressive. They would be on a whole new level. Apple Silicon, which uses ARM architecture is amazing great at giving high performance at low power/wattage. This means that, theoretically, you can get Core-i9 performance whilst consuming less than 150 watts (this is just me, I don’t have anything to back it up with).

macOS Big Sur - another island off the coast of California, just like Catalina Island. (I just realized that when you type “Big Sur”, the Sur is highlighted as an incorrectly spelled word) It looks, quite frankly, like iPadOS. In Apple’s defense, they are pushing for continuity in their products and OS, so it is only a matter of time before they overhaul their desktop OS. macOS Big Sur has its goods and bads, just like everything else. It will have a fresh new UI, newly update Xcode and Safari, and much more. However, I really have an aversion for their new symbols. I like them in iPadOS and iOS, but not in desktop OSes. It just feels too “mobile-like”. But hey, new chip, new UI, new OS. Huge year for Apple’s desktop products compared to last year. Also, Apple finally got rid of the 10.XX.XX numbering, deciding to go from 10.XX.XX to 11.XX.XX (after around 2 decades in 10.XX.XX).

iOS 14. I mean, I don’t use a phone in daily use, and I really don’t care what OS I use. Android and iOS are both fine, but I do prefer iOS. They haven’t overhauled the design or the OS, just some cool stuff that, as EVERYBODY has pointed out, has been on Android since forever. Widgets, app list, just to name a few. Unlock your car with your iPhone, and “half-apps” so you can do stuff in an app without downloading it. Cool stuff.

There wasn’t much for iPad OS either. Nothing much I really deem important, as I just use my iPad as my gaming “laptop” and “phone”. You can go watch the WWDC 2020 recaps and get your own info.

P.S. AMD is still better than Intel in most applications